


A Funny Kommandant

by aces



Category: Hogan's Heroes
Genre: Homosexuality, M/M, Male Homosexuality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-02
Updated: 2011-02-02
Packaged: 2017-10-15 08:02:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/158765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aces/pseuds/aces
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Klink is surprising in what he knows.  If only he could <i>do</i> something about any of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Funny Kommandant

**Author's Note:**

> From the prompt, "Colonel Klink/Hogan (one-sided), It's hard enough staying out of trouble when you're just an incompetent Kommandant in Nazi Germany. All that on top of trying desperately to hide the fact that you're attracted to other men (including a certain American lady's man) makes for a very stressed colonel." The title comes from part of a line from the episode “The Late Inspector General.” Thanks to jenlev for her advice & suggestions.

_Montag_

“Hogan, how many times must I tell you no?” Klink sits back in his chair and glares up at the American. “Don’t you ever get _tired_ of hearing it?”

“Not really,” Hogan says, “I guess you’d just call me the eternal optimist.”

Klink blows a breath out through his nose. “No, I will not requisition your men fresh fruit. Now, if you would not mind, I would like to get back to my paperwork.” He gestures down at the papers scattered across his usually tidy desk.

Klink likes order. Regulations, protocols, categories. It’s the only way he knows to make sense of the world.

“Your lips say no,” Hogan says, “but I know you really want to say yes.” He salutes and turns around, leaving the door open behind him as he pauses by Helga’s desk.

Klink freezes at Hogan’s words, then slumps when the colonel leaves. He watches Hogan flirt with the young woman, watches her flirt back. He can’t hear what they’re saying from here, but he recognizes the smiles, the way their bodies shift closer and closer.

He tells himself he isn’t jealous (he is careful not to ask himself of whom he is not jealous), and he still has his paperwork.

*

“Report!” Klink doesn’t look at Schultz, or Langenscheid, or any of the other men. He tries not to look at the prisoners either—Hogan. He has a headache, and he doesn’t think he’s made much of a dent in his paperwork.

“Sir!” Schultz’s voice is thin, panicky; Klink’s heart sinks. What this time? “Sir, I have to report that-that two prisoners are missing!”

“Of course they are,” Klink sighs and then glares at his sergeant. “What are you waiting for, Schultz? _Find_ them!”

“Sir! Yes sir!” Schultz salutes, sloppily—how did he ever get into the Army? Klink wonders again, the question still not worn smooth despite constant repetition—and then turns back to the men.

Klink glares at the prisoners who are present, his gaze resting finally on Colonel Hogan. Hogan is already looking at him. Smiling, or smirking, the way the American usually is.

Klink turns away.

*

Schultz reports the men found just as an air raid starts. Klink is already in his dressing gown, preparing for bed; Schultz ducks automatically when he hears the planes whistling overhead, and Klink tells him to go and find his safety elsewhere. Schultz shuffles out of the living room of Klink’s quarters, and Klink waits out the raid alone.

Planes, always planes these days. Every night, every day, and Klink hasn’t flown in years. The raids and noise are relentless.

Klink doesn’t get much sleep that night.

* * *

 _Dienstag_

It is never a good day when Major Hochstetter comes to camp.

“Klink!” The Gestapo major barely bothers to salute Klink when he marches into Klink’s office that morning.

“Major Hochstetter, what an unexpected—pleasure,” Klink tries to smile, be gracious, as he half-stands and reaches across the desk to shake hands. He wants to be a man who is always gracious under pressure. His father taught him that. He worries sometimes that he does not live up to what his father would expect. “What can we do for you?”

Hochstetter throws himself into the guest chair in front of Klink’s desk and glares at the colonel suspiciously, not bothering to shake Klink’s hand. Klink sinks back into his own chair. “I need to borrow some of your men.”

“What?” Klink sits up. “But why, haven’t you enough of your own men?”

The major continues to glare. “This is a highly top-secret mission, Colonel Klink! From the Fuehrer himself! Do you really want to question my orders?”

Klink’s shoulders droop. “Of course not,” he says. “How many men do you need?”

“Half a dozen.”

Klink stiffens. “That many?!” He meets Hochstetter’s gaze and waves a hand wearily. “Yes, yes, of course, as many as you need.” He laughs a little, nervously. “Try to bring them back in one piece, won’t you?”

“Hmph.” For a moment, Hochstetter almost looks human. “I would like to make that promise.” He stands up again. “Heil Hitler!”

“Heil Hitler!” Klink returns the salute and watches the major storm out of his office before sighing deeply and turning back to his desk, and his paperwork.

Not five minutes later Hogan is requesting permission through Helga to see him. Hogan always does this, Klink thinks to himself (not petulantly, never petulantly; something else his father had tried to teach him). The American always seems to know exactly when something different, out of the routine, has happened, and he always comes sniffing around to find out what. Perhaps it is not so surprising; the men were probably outside playing games—they usually are; the prisoners never seem to want to remain inside, and Klink can’t understand why. They probably saw Hochstetter’s car, and Hogan likes to feel as if he is still in the war, even if he is a prisoner. Sometimes Klink indulges him, gives him some useless tidbits—oh yes, a visit by an important Field Marshal there; a new tank being tested here.

At least, Klink thinks he’s indulging the American. Sometimes he’s not sure. Sometimes he worries it’s the other way round.

He’s half-tempted to tell Helga he won’t see the other colonel. He doesn’t have to see the senior POW every time said senior POW gets a whim. He doesn’t have to do anything he doesn’t want to as Kommandant of the Stalag.

But, he finds, he can never turn the American colonel away.

“Yes, yes, what is it now, Hogan? You haven’t come back requesting more supplies again, have you?”

“Of course not, sir,” Hogan says, seating himself comfortably in the guest chair, sleek and self-possessed as always. “I know better than to try to push you, sir. You never budge.”

“Quite right.” Klink wishes he didn’t bluster so much. He often makes a vow to himself, in the dark of night when he should be sleeping, that he will _not_ bluster anymore. But he always breaks the vow.

“What did Major Hochstetter want?”

It galls Klink that Hogan doesn’t even bother hiding his curiosity. The man should be cowering in fear in front of his German superiors, but he does not. “It does not concern you, Colonel.”

“I’m just asking,” Hogan holds up his hands in a gesture of surrender, but the rest of his body never loses its usual poise and confidence. “He’s just always blowing in and doing whatever he wants, isn’t he?”

“He’s with the Gestapo,” Klink says moodily, standing up to prowl his office. He pauses by the window and looks out. The prisoners _are_ playing a game, naturally; they always seem to be playing a game, and they always seem so abominably _happy_. They’re prisoners; they should be miserable like him. “They usually _do_ take whatever they want.”

“Take, steal, snatch,” Hogan agrees. “They’re not exactly team players, are they. What’d he want this time, the use of the cooler for some new nefarious scheme?”

“No, only some of my guards.” _Damn_ it. Klink swings around to glare at the American. “But that does not give you any reason to attempt to escape! There are still plenty of guards watching your every move, you and your men, Colonel!”

“We would never even dream of trying to escape from here, Herr Kommandant,” Hogan assures him, standing up. “I hope he didn’t take too many of your men, sir?”

Klink glares. “What concern of it is yours?”

“None whatsoever, sir,” Hogan says. “He didn’t take Schultz, did he?”

Klink closes his eyes briefly. “If only he had,” he says and opens them again. “Dismissed, Hogan. I have far more important things to do than stand here and-and _chat_ with you.”

Hogan smiles again, that strange little quirk that barely moves his lips upwards. Klink never knows how to interpret that look. But then, there is so very little that he knows for sure anymore. “Of course, sir. Sorry to take up so much of your time.”

He salutes and leaves, and while he closes the door this time it doesn’t quite catch, and Klink can hear Helga’s low laugh and Hogan’s cajoling voice, even if he still cannot catch the words.

Klink ponders, for a moment, setting fire to his paperwork. But then he glances at the picture of the Fuehrer on the wall and steels himself once more.

*

The Fuehrer is giving an address over the radio. Klink stays late in his office to listen to it, taking his dinner at his desk. When he opens the box he keeps on his desk for a cigar, he finds he only has two left. And there’s barely any brandy left in the decanter.

It enrages him that the men steal from him in this way. He knows they do; he knows Hogan does too, but he never catches them at it and he cannot stop them.

He listens to the Fuehrer rant and rave, and his own rage gives way to the usual half-buried fear that has been his habitual state of mind for as long as he can remember, and he thinks about what his father would say to know that he cannot even control this tiny little thing in his life.

* * *

 _Mittwoch_

Schultz is babbling about something again, instead of making a proper report at morning roll call. “Schultz!” Klink cuts across him. “Are the men all present and accounted for?”

“Ja, Herr Kommandant!” Schultz salutes so quickly he raps his hand into helmet, knocking it askew. Klink takes a deep breath.

“Dismissed,” he says through gritted teeth.

Hochstetter has taken four more guards. He didn’t return the first six, and Klink is afraid to ask. The dogs are ferocious this morning, barking and struggling against Schnitzer as he attempts to take them away and replace them with the new dogs. And Hogan is standing there, watching everything, watching him; sometimes Klink fancies he can feel Hogan’s eyes on him even at night when he is in bed, but he does not admit that to anyone. The American hasn’t asked about Hochstetter’s mission again—at least, not directly, not that Klink remembers. Klink gets confused sometimes when Hogan is in the room. So does Schultz, though Schultz is always confused and is usually more susceptible when that little Frenchman has been cooking.

Klink _knows_ these things. But he does not know why he can’t do anything about them.

*

The mail brings a letter from an old friend. Klink falls upon it with the most cheer he has felt in days, possibly weeks. He has not heard from Peter in far too long.

A friend from the Gymnasium, their lives have taken different courses but somehow they have stayed in touch over the decades. A handful of letters back and forth every few years, the odd visit. Peter has been married for years with children—and now, he writes, he’s expecting his first grandchild.

A whole life, Klink thinks as he sets the letter down, a whole _series_ of lives. Klink has nobody. Sometimes he gets terribly lonely when he thinks like this, when he reads letters from his friend, but when he tries to picture himself with a life like Peter’s it seems strange, more foreign than the prisoners he oversees.

Peter has always been handsome, intelligent; the last time Klink saw him, four or five years ago, he had aged only gracefully, his hair still dark and full. And he still had his boyish laugh, the one Klink remembers vividly from school; that charming laugh had gotten them both out of many scrapes.

He remembers other things too, and sometimes he wonders if one is supposed to remember these things about one’s best friend from youth, if other people— _normal_ people, proper members of the Aryan race—think the way he does.

He worries they don’t.

*

Klink is exhausted enough, and has had enough to drink (wine, since most of the brandy is gone), that he thinks he’ll actually fall asleep at a decent hour tonight. He looks forward to it; sleep never comes easily to him. He spends most nights tossing and turning, mind churning away at all the things that went wrong that day, worrying at ways that he could find himself in trouble with his superiors again, caught up in memories of old humiliating and stupid incidents. Last night he kept thinking of his father; tonight, before falling asleep, he is caught up in ancient and bittersweet memories of Peter.

It’s not an air raid that wakes him tonight, at three o’clock in the morning when he has barely been asleep three hours. It’s a bomb. A single explosion from somewhere nearby, near enough it rocks his quarters and shakes him awake, shouting in fear.

He has a terrible feeling Hochstetter will be coming to see him tomorrow. There have been too many explosions near his Stalag, he knows; more than could be accounted for with the twists and turns of everyday warfare.

There will be questions tomorrow, again, and Klink has the horrible sinking feeling that he will not be prepared for them, again.

* * *

 _Donnerstag_

It is not Hochstetter who comes, but General Burkhalter. And he brings his sister Gertrude with him, and a beautiful young woman who is helping Gertrude with her war work. Whatever her war work is. Klink is afraid to ask.

Burkhalter asks his questions, sharp and furious, and Klink of course has no answers. He wishes he did, or at least that he could cope better with having no answers, but this interrogation terrifies him, no matter how much he tries to tell himself that none of this is his fault. He has never been good at handling others’ dislike; he has never been very good at being in trouble, which is why he has always tried to stay on the straight and narrow path. “Very well,” Burkhalter snaps at last, “I should have known better than to ask _you_. We shall stay for dinner before we leave, Klink. See that something edible is prepared for us.”

“Yes, sir,” Klink says, praying that their supplies have been refilled and that no stupid quartermaster somewhere along the line has fouled things up again and given him fifteen cases of vinegar instead of the butter he requisitioned. “Of course, sir. Perhaps you would care to use my quarters to freshen up?” he adds, turning to the ladies. Gertrude tries to simper at him, but she is not really the simpering sort. The young girl—Else—smiles politely. She is blonde-haired and blue-eyed and petite and demure in her dress. A perfect German woman.

Burkhalter goes with them, and Hogan is back, nipping at Klink’s exhausted heels as always. “I can’t see you now, Hogan,” Klink snaps, but the man is already there, standing in front of his desk, patient as ever. “Oh, what do you want _now_?”

“I understand General Burkhalter and the ladies are staying for dinner, sir,” Hogan sounds injured, “and I wanted to offer the services of LeBeau to be your chef tonight. I know the man you have on kitchen duty isn’t exactly the greatest cook,” he adds in a confidential whisper, leaning against Klink’s desk in that damnable casual, intimate way he has, too close for Klink’s comfort.

Klink stares up at him suspiciously. “What are you planning, Hogan?”

“Me, sir?” The colonel’s eyes widen. “I would never plan anything! I know better than to try to pull one over on you, sir.”

Klink is flattered, despite himself. He is always flattered despite himself, even though he sometimes has the sneaking suspicion that Hogan’s flattery is really mere empty mockery. He thought Americans were supposed to be the open, honest, un-subtle ones. But then, perhaps Hogan is simply not typical of other Americans.

“What do you want in return?” Klink reminds himself to remain suspicious, and is proud that he does not give in so easily.

“Nothing, sir! I’m wounded that you would think my motives so impure!” Hogan sits down in the guest chair, makes himself comfortable in that appalling way he has. “But, now that you’ve mentioned it, we really could use some fresh fruit. I think some of the boys are developing scurvy.”

Klink rolls his eyes upwards. “When will you learn, Colonel Hogan, that you are merely the prisoner of war?”

“I know it every single day, sir,” Hogan answers. “Should I tell LeBeau to start cooking?”

Klink waves a hand. “Yes, yes. _Thank_ you,” he adds through gritted teeth because it galls him; he should not have to thank a man whom he can order, but this time it is his mother’s voice, drilling politeness in his ear, that forces him to be gracious.

“You can always count on me, Kommandant,” Hogan tosses over his shoulder as he leaves the office, and Klink wishes, suddenly and unbearably, that he could actually believe that.

*

Klink tries to flirt with Else. He has watched his father, his friends, senior officers, all the men in his life flirt with beautiful women—Colonel Robert E. Hogan among them, naturally. He has tried to learn from their ways, and sometimes he thinks he gets it right, when the girl smiles at him and bats her eyelashes and leaves her fingers lightly resting on his arm.

Tonight his heart is not in it, though he knows that it should be. When was the last time he saw a beautiful woman? One here, in his camp, who was not Helga, and she he only finds objectively beautiful because the other men in the camp all obviously think her so? This girl is fresh-faced and sweet, all that blonde hair and blue eyes, and she smiles at him with a particular delightful shyness, but his heart is not in it.

It has nothing to do with Frau Gertrude Linkmeyer, though her glowering chaperonage would be enough to make stronger men than Klink quail. It has to do with that letter from Peter, dear, darked-haired laughing Peter; and his exhaustion; and the pressures of being a Kommandant of the only Stalag in Germany that has never lost a prisoner; and that blasted American colonel watching his every move and perpetually snaring him in schemes despite himself.

So Klink does a poor job flirting, and Burkhalter takes his women away, and LeBeau and one of the other prisoners—Carter, Klink thinks—clear away the dishes and leave too. And eventually Klink sends himself to bed, though he knows he won’t sleep any better tonight than he has so far this week.

He tosses and turns for a while, his thoughts a riot of half-formed, fleeting fancies. He thinks of his old friend Peter, and the Fuehrer, and the Fatherland, and his father; he thinks of a fellow lieutenant at the end of the last Great War, a dark-haired young man who always took great risks and made Klink laugh; he thinks of Hogan, that blasted clean-cut, strong-jawed, well-built dark-haired American _colonel_.

He fights himself, tries to stop himself, but eventually Klink takes himself in hand. He is ashamed, _ashamed_ of himself for resorting to this activity in order to make himself fall asleep; it is shameful and degrading and wrong, and it is even more shameful and degrading and wrong that instead of thinking of the lovely Else that he met tonight, his thoughts turn to old boyhood friends and American colonels. But here, in the dark, when there is no one to see, it’s a way to give his half-formed, fleeting fancies a physical _freedom_. And in that too-brief moment of release, the perpetual half-felt fear melts away.

Finally, Klink sleeps.

* * *

 _Freitag_

Klink stands in his office, watching the men outside. The prisoners are playing another game today, despite the cold; they are a restless, rowdy group, and Schultz is yelling at them, attempting to corral them.

They touch so easily, Klink thinks as he watches from the window. A hand on an elbow there, a jostling push here, a leg up there. They think nothing of it, their lives filled daily with their close proximity. His own German soldiers too, he thinks. This tiny space filled with _men_.

Perhaps if he had spent more time with women, Klink ponders, perhaps then he would not be so uncomfortable around them.

Schultz is still yelling, and the ball the prisoners are using conveniently hits him on the helmet. Klink turns away in disgust. Is it any wonder, _is it any wonder_ , that nobody respects him if this is the assistance he has? It astonishes him every day that his camp is the best in all Germany.

He finally leaves the office to call Schultz to bring Hogan to him. He is not looking forward particularly to this conversation.

“Colonel Hogan!” Schultz roars, surrounded by a swirling mass of colorfully-uniformed much-smaller prisoners, and perhaps if Klink were in a better mood he would be laughing at the comical sight. But then, perhaps not. He snaps at the American as he saunters away from the crowd, “Control your men, Hogan!”

“Are you kidding? In the middle of a soccer game?” Hogan’s hands are in his jacket pockets; the man never wears a tie, and Klink wonders if he would get away with such informality were he still fighting with the RAF or his fellow Americans. Klink can glimpse skin. He makes himself look up. “I know better than to get in the middle of them, Colonel. What did you want to tell me, sir?”

“Your Red Cross packages have been delayed,” Klink tells him shortly, and Hogan blinks. “The truck was overturned on its way from Düsseldorf. I’m afraid your men will not get them before next week at the earliest.”

“Do you want to tell them or shall I?” Hogan almost sounds glum.

“You will, of course; they’re your men,” Klink says. “I have better things to do with my time.” Including discovering how the devil he could stretch his current troops in order to fill all the necessary patrols. On top of yesterday’s debriefing concerning Hochstetter’s mission—about which Klink still has no information, though truthfully he thinks he prefers it that way—Burkhalter had also taken away more men. To the Russian front this time, and Klink had not even considered asking whether he would get them back.

Better them than me, the voice in the back of his mind had whispered, and Klink had wondered what nobility there was in such a thought. Even as he had signed the orders.

“I’m really not looking forward to this, Kommandant,” the American tells him. “They’ve been looking forward to getting new Tommy Dorsey records for weeks now. The only thing that would help is if you let me tell them they’ll get—”

“Absolutely not,” Klink cuts him off and turns away. “Control your men, Hogan, however you have to do it.”

He stalks back into his office and pulls down the curtain before going back to work.

*

It is the end of the day. The end of the working week, technically, though Klink’s working week never really ends when he lives and breathes this Stalag. Perhaps he should go into town this weekend, he thinks as he clears off his desk. Or even further—Köln perhaps? The war is everywhere, he knows, but at least he wouldn’t be _here_. He thinks he was lucky to get through this week without any major disasters.

And now, just as he is about to lock the office and head to his quarters for a relaxing dinner and even more relaxing alcohol and some music on the radio, Hogan slips in.

“What _now_ ,” Klink says, his temper fraying. “Hogan, you simply cannot just enter and leave as you please; I must insist that you…” He stops speaking, sits down again, rubs his eyes. “Why am I bothering? You won’t listen anyway.”

“I always listen to what you say, Colonel,” Hogan says. “I always find it _fascinating_.”

Klink glares at him in suspicion. There it is again, that underlying hurtful mockery, and Klink is tired of it all. “You want more fruit? Fine. On Monday, your men can start having a portion of fruit at their breakfast meal. Three days a week.”

Hogan smiles at him, a beam of sincere delight that Klink is not sure he’s ever seen before. It dazzles him a little in his exhaustion, like an unexpected ray of sunlight through the cloud. “Thank you, sir! You have no idea how happy it will make the men when they hear that. They were pretty down about the Red Cross packages, I have to tell you.”

“Of course they were,” Klink sounds more bitter than he intends. At least they _get_ Red Cross packages. He stands, gestures for Hogan to leave. He thinks he’s still a little shaky from that grin Hogan rewarded him; he needs to be alone to recover some form of equanimity. “I shall see you at evening roll call, Hogan,” he says.

Hogan pauses by the door and grins again, cheerily, with none of his usual watchfulness or mockery, none of his usual American braggadocio. Klink is perhaps more exhausted than he even realizes, and he wonders for the briefest instant what it would be like, truly, to touch Robert E. Hogan.

Something—something must flash across his face because when he shifts his gaze from Hogan’s lips to Hogan’s eyes, Hogan is staring at him, eyes widening in realization. And Klink reels backwards, all the distant, submerged terror of his entire life crashing down on him all at once in a desolating despair.

He is ruined. Hogan need only speak, call for Sergeant Schultz, and Colonel Wilhelm Klink is ruined. In a moment of ghastly self-awareness and prophecy, Klink knows that he has betrayed himself, his Fatherland, his father. He will die a traitor’s, _coward’s_ death, all because of something he _thought_ , never acted upon. Shameful, terrible thoughts that no true German would ever let himself think.

“Hogan,” he stutters out and leans against the desk in front of him because he has no strength, “Hogan, _please_ —”

But the American’s eyes shutter closed, and Klink almost falls back into the chair, or perhaps he would run, run even further than Köln. He doesn’t know, and he doesn’t find out because Hogan opens his eyes again. He looks directly at Klink, even takes a step forward, and tells him very quietly and firmly, “I will not use this against you, Colonel. You have my word.”

He turns on his heel and walks out.

Klink sits down at last, his legs too shaky to hold him up any longer. Eventually, he leaves his office. He cancels evening roll call, does not leave his quarters all weekend. On Monday, with thoughts of his father, he braces himself to face the same tedious, dull routine of every other week he has survived through this war, through his life.

He even brings himself to meet Hogan’s eye at morning roll call, and Hogan looks back at him as blandly as ever. And so the days go, over and over, and Hogan is as good as his word, and Klink finds the terror returning to its usual state, half-forgotten amidst the usual chaos that is Stalag 13.

But Klink remembers the pity he saw in Hogan’s eyes.


End file.
